"BANGKOK – Thai police say a roadside bomb in the country's insurgency-plagued south has killed four army rangers and wounded five other rangers and a civilian.

Pol. Col. Mana Daechawarit of the Sai Buri district police station in Narathiwat province says the soldiers were on patrol in Pattani province Friday morning when the pickup truck they were traveling in was struck by the blast.

More than 6,500 people have been killed since a Muslim separatist insurgency flared in Thailand's three southernmost provinces of Yala, Pattani, and Narathiwat in 2004. Recent cease-fire talks between the government and some separatist factions have made little progress."